One More Story Games Podcast

Wow! We've done 10 developers chats! Blair is feeling better, but Jean is still under the weather. We start off talking about Jodie Whittaker taking on the role of the 13th Doctor Who. Then we're only one week away from our #AskCharlaine episode where we will have Charlaine Harris herself to answer questions about Lily Bard, True Blood, and her new NBC series Midnight Texas. Speaking of which, next week is the network premiere of Midnight and we talk about all of the San Diego Comicon events that have been occurring throughout the week. Charlaine has been doing so many interviews about the new series. You can explore Midnight Texas, meet Charlaine, and even meet the cast. We're getting ready to watch on Monday night and perhaps even live tweet during the event. The character from our Lily Bard series is present in Midnight, Bobo Winthorp and we quickly mention how Charlaine has to "let go" of her works when they get adapted into other media. So far she seems to approve of our take on Shakespeare, but we can talk more about that next week. In other news, we have brought on Kate Edwards as a new advisor to One More Story Games. She was the former head of the International Game Developer's Association, and a big believer in what we're doing with StoryStylus and story focused games. We're so happy to have her join our advisory board of Megan Gaiser (former CEO of Her Interactive), Alex Peh (Head of Mobile development at PayPal Canada), and Sean Smillie (Head of Planet Fiction Studios and ex-EA employee with Blair). For our new screenshot, we show off an interior and exterior graphic of the Shakespeare Garden Apartments. We have built the world for the first two chapters of the game. Now we are hooking up the choices and characters in those initial story beats that will form the playable demo of our game. On the technical front, Blair is nearly finished building the spellchecking component for StoryStylus so we can consistently spell Hofstettler. Please join us NEXT WEEK when we talk Shakespeare's Landlord with author Charlaine Harris!

Welcome back to the One More Story Games podcast. We're a little under the weather but we continue to work on the Shakespeare's Landlord video game. Our first topic is to discuss the recent passing of actor Nelsan Ellis who played Lafayette on HBO's True Blood (based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series of books). Charlaine's character Lafayette deals with LGBTQ bigots "Tip Your Waitress" and how her novels discuss social injustices. Our next topic is to continue to announce that Charlaine Harris herself will be joining our podcast on July 28th at 3pm EST. Allena, one of our viewers, mentions the way that Charlaine weaves her characters throughout her series; Lily Bard even shows up in the Sookie Stackhouse series at one point. The development game continues. We are now designing the character conversations for the game. More on that later. We now have a model for Lily's block which includes the Arboretum, Shakespeare Garden Apartments, Lily's House, Carleton's House, and Shakespeare Combined Church. We will have more to show the experience of walking around the block in the coming weeks. One of the problems we're running into is that each of the five Lily Bard books are merging together but we're happy to put all of the stories into our game. Also we're having to depart from some of the book details just to make things interesting for our players: e.g. the Arboretum might be a little more than a bunch of trees with plaques next to them. We end our show thinking about where Lily Bard would be these days and thinking about the other strong women characters that may have influenced Charlaine when she originally wrote Shakespeare's Landlord.

We're using the Be.Live Talk Show format, and we got off to a rough start when our first podcast attempt was halted when it crashed. This week we're talking about blank slates or Tabula Rasa since we officially started the production of the Shakespeare's Landlord game. So we've more in game art to show you, that we will not be posting anywhere else (check out the YouTube version podcast listeners). First off, our podcast is now on Stitcher, and second we're reminding our listeners that we will have Charlaine Harris herself on our podcast on July 28th. Submit any questions you want to ask her to #askcharlaine. This week we created the Shakespeare's Landlord story project in StoryStylus, so we're starting from a blank slate or a "tabula rasa". The characters, items and topics of conversation has been entered into the system and we'll be working on the locations and world building next week. There is a discussion about how StoryStylus works by building a set of story bricks, or story nouns: characters, locations, items, topics, events. Then we take those bricks and link them together using script code--the cement that links the brinks together to build a cohesive wall or game for people to play. (how that for a building metaphor?) While this looks intimidating, we've taught kids as young as 11 to make their own games at our previous summer camps. We show off our compiled map of Shakespeare using Prescott Arkansas as a model and the described layout from the books. Then we show some of the new art that will be used in creating Lily's house, which caused one of our audience members to say "I can't wait to start clicking on things!" (check out our YouTube channel to see those images) Finally, we show the complete story flow diagram for the current state of the game: this is a breakdown of all of the choices in the game and their consequences. This prints out to be a 23 page banner! Tune in to hear more about where we're at, and where we're going with our Shakespeare's Landlord game development.

We're re-announcing that Charlaine Harris herself will be joining us in an upcoming podcast for July 28th. First off, we do a bit of a follow-up from the seriousness of the previous podcast. Our game will not shy away from the emotional pain that Lily Bard struggles to overcome in that playing (as Lily) will sometimes mean being triggered by emotional events: more on that in future podcasts. This week we're announcing that we're moving from pre-production to full production. This is just a fancy way of saying that we finished most of the planning and are ready to start building the game. To celebrate this we wanted to share with you what we will be sending off to Charlaine for her to review. Also, we announce that there will be two different storylines in our game: authentic and alternate. One will be a faithful adaptation of the Shakespeare's Landlord novel and the other will similar yet different for those who have read the book. This way we can keep you on your toes with a whole NEW mystery of who killed Pardon Albee. Some of the other contents of our design package: renaming Bobo Winthrop and designing the map of Shakespeare. The big reveal this week is the game art of Lily's bedroom done by our artist Anthony (if you want to see the art then go ). As we wind down, we talk about what it was like to read the last sentence of the last Lily Bard book: Shakespeare's Counselor. Then audience member Ellen chimes in with the perfect new name for Bobo. Tune in to hear it for yourself!

WARNING: This episode may cause trigger warnings due to descriptions of sexual violence. Jean is back this week from the Jalloo Festival of Animation and Gaming, and Blair is back from a Costa Rican tech trade delegation. This week we are talking about Serious Games: video games that do more than just entertain. We get into the violent details of Chapter 5 in "Shakespeare's Landlord". Lily Bard is a character who was kidnapped and violently raped, and physically scarred by her attackers. This forms the basis of her character. Lily is a survivor who keeps people at arms distance. But there are other topics of racial hatred and violence contained within Charlaine's Lily Bard series. We discuss the challenges of adapting these novels as interactive works. Our goal is to create a work that creates empathy with victims of violence and abuse. We talk about the games that have made a difference for us in dealing with mature subject matter. I mention the board game version of the video game "This War of Mine", and in particular a Tom Vasel's review that claimed that TWoM is a GREAT GAME but that he wondered if he would ever play it again due to the intensity of the emotions that he had while playing it. (see his review here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv6imRxczhk ) We wonder if people might lose enjoyment of our game because of the inclusion of Lily's triggers; however, our audience lets us know that the reason they return to the series is because of their love for the Lily Bard character. We can only hope to achieve this in the making of our game.

Welcome back to the fifth One More Story Games podcast. We're using a new Facebook live streaming system called BeLive.tv, so for the first few minutes we're enjoying the new chat features where people have their comments shown right in the stream. Jean Leggett is away giving a keynote address at the Jalloo Festival of Animation and Gaming in Miramichi, New Brunswick. This week I'm talking with game-designer/writer/director Neal Hallford who is working with us to create the Shakespeare's Landlord story game. Neal has been in the games industry for 27 years and has worked on many sword & sorcery RPGs most notably "Betrayal at Krondor". We talk about appreciating storytelling, yet working within the video games industry. Neal shares his background of growing up in Tulsa and being close to the Texarkana setting and world of Lily Bard's Shakespeare. Most importantly we discuss becoming Shakespeare's Champions, protecting Charlaine's voice and characters in building the interactive version of her world. To that end, Neal has gone through and counted the 226 characters that make up Harris' dramatis personae of Shakespeare. This will form the foundation of our future game development. We get closer to discussing the problematic Chapter 5 and talk about how the extreme violence has shaped the character of Lily Bard (stay tuned for next week where we deal with this head-on). And will we have so much fun that Charlaine Harris will want to write another Lily Bard book?

This episode contains a collection of discussion topics. We talk about our latest success releasing Story Worlds on the iPad. (see Story Worlds in the iTunes Store, and Story Worlds in the Google Play for the Android). There is a brief summary of the opening chapter of Shakespeare's Landlord and what it will be like to play the first scene of our mystery adventure game as Lily Bard. Could there be a friendly and social Lily Bard? We ponder the phrase 'Suzy Creamcheese'. We discuss some of the challenges of female representation in games and stories. Finally, we outline some of the upcoming dev chats coming in the next few weeks, but more importantly that Charlaine Harris herself will be joining us in an upcoming future podcast.

So here's a funny story! We actually recorded a podcast on the Friday but through an accident we lost the video. This is the re-recording of that chat. Though we don't have as much audience participation; however it was a fun chat talking about our favourite mystery games and stories. We give some updated progress on the character portraits in the game and which actress we think best fits for Lily Bard. And finally, you learn why Jean is not allowed to play Clue/Cluedo with our friends.

Welcome to the second episode! In this episode Jean is finally able to finish her story of meeting Charlaine Harris at Bouchercon 2014. You will learn the magic in the question "Is that something we can help you with?" We consider setting the game in modern times versus 1996. The 'modern' when the novel was written. Will temporal paradoxes ensue? What will it feel like playing Lily Bard and making choices in the story of Shakespeare's Landlord? More importantly... where does Lily get her hair cut? All these questions get answered and more!

In our premier podcast we meet Jean and Blair Leggett of One More Story Games. They have been married for 21 years and enjoy interrupting each other. For the past four years they have been building the StoryStylus authoring system which lets people go online and create interactive story games. Now they are adapting Charlaine Harris' novel Shakespeare's Landlord and want to bring you on the adventure of making the adventure game. They are funny, sassy and have some interesting stories to share about making games. Listen along and prove us wrong.